THE 1994 CAMPAIGN: Political Memo; Tie to D'Amato Could Turn Pataki Victory Into Tumult

By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: October 16, 1994

If the Republican Party wins the governorship of New York for the first time in a generation, George E. Pataki will be the man of the hour. But the man just behind him for days and weeks and months now has been Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, and therein lies a paradox:

A Republican triumph would at last make Mr. D'Amato, the wily survivor who has endured repeated investigations into his ethical conduct, the King of the Hill. Yet the price of victory would be a passel of internal party feuds and rivalries, most of them growing out of Mr. D'Amato's very sponsorship of Mr. Pataki, a freshman State Senator from Putnam County, whose nomination he engineered.

The permutations are tantalizing, if still imponderable. Would Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a sworn enemy of Mr. D'Amato who has been notably cool toward Mr. Pataki, be the south end of a City Hall-Albany standoff unrivaled since John V. Lindsay and Nelson A. Rockefeller's warring days? Would Ralph J. Marino, the Republican leader of the State Senate who opposed Mr. Pataki's candidacy, fall from that post?

Or would a Governor Pataki, atop a government of 240,000 workers with all a Governor's powers of office, automatically outweigh the patron behind his throne and distance himself from Mr. D'Amato, perhaps forging new alliances of his own with Mr. Giuliani or someone else? Finally, of course, if Mr. Pataki loses, there will be egg all over Mr. D'Amato's face, a smile on Mr. Giuliani's, and ashes in everyone's mouth.

"The more power that's at stake in a situation, the more likely there is to be a dispute as to who shall wield it, and that's what's going on here," said State Senator Roy Goodman of Manhattan, a Pataki supporter who has tried to stay above the fray. "But basically, there's been no rupture that's led me to believe it's unfixable, and in fact there seems to be a trend toward increasing Republican hegemony. A Pataki victory would obviously change the whole balance of power in the state."

So far, Mr. Pataki and Mr. D'Amato are all but inseparable. When the Senator dropped by Mr. Pataki's Manhattan headquarters on Columbus Day, a befuddled look crossed his face as he wondered aloud where to find the "little boy's room." Most politicians assume that if Mr. Pataki moves into the Executive Mansion, Mr. D'Amato won't have to ask.

Mr. Pataki's senior campaign aides -- chief strategist, press secretary, fund-raiser, ad-maker -- are all on loan from Mr. D'Amato. Calls from old Pataki friends volunteering to help the campaign are returned by D'Amato loyalists. All campaign appearances are tightly planned, and the candidate himself has been known to joke about how many "unauthorized stops" he can sneak in.

That is part of the reason Republican power no longer seems a contradiction in terms in New York, where the party was a major national force in the days of Mr. Rockefeller and Gov. Thomas E. Dewey before him, but became so broke and demoralized after the disastrous 1990 gubernatorial candidacy of Pierre A. Rinfret that it had trouble paying the light bill in the Albany headquarters.

Then Mr. Giuliani became the first Republican in City Hall since Mr. Lindsay, and after some fits and starts with prospects as eclectic as Donald J. Trump, Mr. D'Amato settled squarely on Mr. Pataki, and worked to assure his designation as the party's choice. He beat back a challenge from Herbert London, the Conservative Party's gubernatorial nominee four years ago who was Mr. Marino's choice this year.

Mr. Pataki, who likes to note that last winter, when Mr. D'Amato was talking up other prospective candidates, he was trooping around the state seeking support for himself, is polite but firm when asked what role Mr. D'Amato would play in a Pataki administration.

"His role would be that of the U.S. Senator, along with the other U.S. Senator," he said in a recent interview. "And that would be his role."

Senator D'Amato, who has repeatedly said he would be happy if Mr. Pataki simply delivers on his campaign promises to cut taxes and shake up government, can nevertheless barely contain his glee at the thought of winning. The other day, he regaled a reporter with the campaign's plan to hold a rally with Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey at the New York Hilton on Wednesday, at the same time Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is to appear with President Clinton at the Sheraton.

"We'll take this juxtaposition," Mr. D'Amato said.

For some time, Mr. D'Amato himself toyed with running for governor, and many politicians said he coveted the job because it, more than any other, is the center of political and patronage power in the state (with about 3,800 appointments under the governor's control), and Mr. D'Amato cut his teeth in the Nassau County Republican machine, where patronage was a way of life. Then, as he began sounding out relatively obscure figures like Mr. Pataki, speculation grew that he did not really want the party to win the governorship after all, since that could mean a threat to him.

But once he threw himself behind Mr. Pataki's candidacy, he did so wholeheartedly, lending aides and trying to transfer $400,000 in his own campaign funds, until a court ruled that far exceeded legal contribution limits. Mr. D'Amato has warned allies of Mr. Marino, the State Senate Republican leader, that his days are numbered because he tried to block Mr. Pataki's candidacy in favor of Mr. London, who is running for comptroller instead in a deal brokered by Mr. D'Amato and Michael Long, the chairman of the state Conservative Party.

"The rumor was he just wanted to keep it open for himself," said Mr. Long, a D'Amato ally who has occasionally feuded with him, too. "Well, that's been proven wrong. He deserves to have a lot of kudos if we're successful, and I think he deserves to have a very strong power base."

Governor Rockefeller played a similar role of patron to Mayor Lindsay, but fell to bitter feuding when he thought Mr. Lindsay was not adequately grateful. The two appointed dueling commissions to poke into each other's government performance, and at one point, Mr. Rockefeller threatened to send the National Guard to pick up the trash in the city during a garbage strike.

"I lived through that one and I hope I'll never see anything like it again," said Mr. Goodman.

Mr. Pataki has some history of discounting the wishes of politicians who made him their protege. He was elected to the State Senate by challenging Mary Goodhue, his old boss and the lone Republican woman in the chamber. He was supported in that race by Change New York, an anti-tax group that also opposed Mr. Marino, and in the Senate, Mr. Pataki voted against Mr. Marino on the state budget, a major break in the lockstep legislative rules of Albany, where such questions are worked out by the leadership of both houses and then routinely ratified.

The relationship with Mr. Giuliani is also complex. Mayors and governors face inherent tensions. The city badly needs state aid that could be curtailed if Mr. Pataki cuts spending. Mr. Giuliani did not support Mr. Pataki's candidacy and has yet to endorse him, and the two men have different geopolitical bases and perhaps conflicting ambitions.

"If George Pataki wins, but only barely falls across the finish line because his own party wasn't united, I could imagine there'd be some anger," said City Councilman Charles B. Millard, the Republican nominee for Congress on the Upper East Side.

"I think that Mayor Giuliani is right to say, 'I want to know for sure what's going to happen to New York City before I take a position.' I worry, though, if Pataki doesn't provide good enough answers for him and the Mayor stays out of the race. Because both have interests in working together that a lot of other people in the party don't necessarily share. Upstate Republicans are not fans of New York City."

Photo: The Republican gubernatorial candidate, George E. Pataki, back to camera, at a candidates' forum at the Yonkers Public Library yesterday. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times) Graph: "WHO'S IN CHARGE: New York's Republican Party" provides a flow-chart of current standing among the state's major Republican leaders. (pg. 40)